With conventional stereoscopic surgical microscopes, a magnified representation of an object takes place with the aid of single objectives or objective pairs and a downstream pair of eyepieces through which a person can view the object. These surgical microscopes have the disadvantage that the light intensity available for the observation by the main user is reduced for a branching of image information from the optical path such as is necessary for a parallel observation by a second person or for documentation purposes.
Furthermore, it is often desired with stereoscopic microscopes that the viewfinder or the eyepieces are located as closely as possible to the object to be observed so that it is possible for the user of the microscope to adopt a body posture which is as ergonomic as possible for carrying out manipulations which he would like to carry out at the observed object with the aid of his hands.